


Last Time

by paintedrecs



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Complicated Relationships, Established Relationship, Future Fic, M/M, Minor Scott McCall/Kira Yukimura, POV Derek Hale, Past Kate Argent/Derek Hale, Post 3A Canon Divergence, fighting & making up, relationship dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-15
Updated: 2016-06-15
Packaged: 2018-07-15 05:14:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7209251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paintedrecs/pseuds/paintedrecs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I know the lightning bothers you,” Stiles would say, his dark eyelashes fluttering earnestly, his eyes wide and bright in each flash of light streaking through their bedroom. “Not because - I’m not saying it’s a <em>canine</em> thing,” he’d add, stumbling over his words until any sparks of potential offense were drowned out by laughter, by Derek untangling them enough to flip them over, to press Stiles into the mattress, to silence him with biting kisses as thunder rumbled in the distance, to leave them panting and breathless and exhausted enough to slip back into their rudely interrupted sleep.</p><p>***</p><p>In which Derek and Stiles are both unquestionably assholes, but they wouldn't have each other any other way. (Even when the going gets tough.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Last Time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kinneas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kinneas/gifts), [ShadowsHuntress](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadowsHuntress/gifts).



> I took some three word prompts over on twitter a couple weeks ago to try to break myself out of my writing slump. I meant for this one to be very short and kinda funny, but it kept getting angstier and longer when I went back to it today. [Originally posted on tumblr](http://paintedrecs.tumblr.com/post/145944737670/i-took-some-three-word-prompts-over-on-twitter-a), and crossposted here for easier reading (and because I like keeping track of my stuff on here). I doubled up on the prompt fill, since two folks asked for a rainy day fic.
> 
> **@ademska1 “caught in rain”.**
> 
> **@East_Of_Hell wet sock problem ? (I’M SORRY, IT’S RAINING SINCE FRIDAY AND I’M SINGLE MINDED)**

Derek twisted the radio dial down a couple of notches, telling himself it was so he’d be better able to hear the rain. It’d been sprinkling off and on over the last couple of weeks, in typical Northern California fashion: in fitful bursts, mostly in the middle of the night, leaving the ground just damp enough to indicate an effort had been made. It wasn’t steady enough yet to make him bother with an umbrella when he left the house; anyway, he didn’t mind shaking the rain out of his hair (or fur, if he’d been on an early morning run), even with the jokes that inevitably followed when he chose that method of drying off.

He supposed it was soothing enough, if you liked that sort of thing. He adjusted his movements to follow the patter of rain against the pavement outside, the slow drip from the gutters providing a soft, constant beat as he rinsed each dish and set it in the dishwasher. It didn’t take long to clear away the evening’s dishes. When he reached for the next glass and found himself grasping at empty air, he clenched his fingers for a moment, then shook them loose and resisted the urge to begin pulling clean dishes out of the cabinet to keep his momentum going.

California was still in the midst of a drought, he reminded himself, shutting the dishwasher door with a firm click and resting his hands against it, breathing in and out, grounding himself. He’d wait to run it until after breakfast. Lunch, maybe; there was still plenty of room left inside, since each dish was carefully slotted into a position that would hold it securely as the water rushed over it. There was no haphazard arrangement of bowls and glasses jostling against each other, the clink and clatter making him tense as he sat in the other room, expecting something to shatter in an instant.

The house was quiet that evening. He’d be able to turn the heat off, put on a pair of warm socks, and read in his favorite armchair for as long as he liked. There’d be no television flickering in the corner of the room to distract him, no one crunching chips and scattering crumbs as they rapidly cycled through the channels, over and over, in an optimistic loop as though the programming would change in the few minutes it took to check each station.

He plucked his neatly folded socks off the ottoman and sat down to slip them on his feet, wiggling his toes in the soft blue fabric and trying to breathe past the catch in his chest. He settled back in the chair after a moment, propped his feet up, and opened his book, staring unseeing at the pages. Despite the bookmark, he couldn’t remember where he’d left off, or why the characters were engaged in a knock-down, drag-out fight, their words bitter and sharp, tearing at each other.

The wind was picking up now, sending the rain in a brisk slant against his windows. It was unusual for there to be a downpour at this hour; he wasn’t used to the way his heartbeat tried to keep pace with it, shifting speed in rapid patterns as the wind whistled outside.

To his own surprise, he’d relaxed enough in recent years to return to his normal sleeping habits - that is, once his eyes closed, he’d be dead to the world, so sound asleep that it’d take a strong, or extremely determined, person to shake him awake.

Stiles, of course, fit both categories to excessive degrees. He’d jolt awake at the slightest hint of rain, wrapping his limbs octopus-like around Derek and breathing heavily in his ear until Derek drifted back to the surface and grumbled loudly enough to drown out the thunder.

“I know the lightning bothers you,” Stiles would say, his dark eyelashes fluttering earnestly, his eyes wide and bright in each flash of light streaking through their bedroom. “Not because - I’m not saying it’s a _canine_ thing,” he’d add, stumbling over his words until any sparks of potential offense were drowned out by laughter, by Derek untangling them enough to flip them over, to press Stiles into the mattress, to silence him with biting kisses as thunder rumbled in the distance, to leave them panting and breathless and exhausted enough to slip back into their rudely interrupted sleep.

The night before, Derek had jerked out of a dream, reaching for the cold space next to him. He’d listened to the faint trickle of rain for hours before acknowledging that all hope of further sleep had fled. He’d made coffee, drank it while standing at the counter, rinsed the cup, and shifted into his wolf form, curling back up on the bed, his head resting on the gap where Stiles’s pillow had been. He’d be annoyed by the fur Derek had left behind, he knew. He’d pointedly pluck each black strand free, always managing to miss the trash can in his righteous indignation, his irritation steaming off his skin when Derek took the opportunity to describe exactly how much hair _he’d_ fished out of the bathtub drain, the washing machine, _the dishwasher_. What kind of fucking idiot would drop a bathroom sponge in with their dishes, he’d ask, pressing the point until Stiles gathered up his pillow and stormed out of the house.

He always came back, a day or two later, his stupidly beautiful face bright with apologies. Derek’s heart would flip in his chest when he opened the door, Stiles having inevitably forgotten his key in the heat of the moment, as well as the source of their argument. He’d kiss Derek until he forgot, too, until he could rest his head on Stiles’s chest and fall asleep to the reassuring thump of his heart, temporarily secure on an island of peace.

A clap of thunder shook Derek free from his chair, and he dropped his book, his muscles tight, his body braced to run. He tilted his head, listening past the final booming rolls of thunder, past the radio crooning about lost chances, past the rapidfire beating of his own heart, to one he knew even better. He sighed, resignation settling around his shoulders, yet somehow loosening the ache he’d been steadfastly ignoring. He was fooling himself if he’d thought it’d end any other way.

Upstairs, he pushed the bathroom window open, then used the leverage of his palms on the sill to vault gracefully through, twisting in midair to catch the drainpipe. It creaked a bit in protest but held his weight, and he pulled himself hand over hand to a sliver of roof already occupied by a rain-huddled form.

Stiles startled when Derek dropped down next to him, and Derek automatically grabbed his upper arm, sliding his leg out for Stiles’s scrabbling feet to brace against. Stiles steadied quickly, and Derek let go, wiping his hand against his sweatpants as though he could rid himself of the feel of Stiles’s thick muscles flexing under him.

“Surprised you haven’t broken your neck yet,” he said gruffly, and Stiles huffed out a laugh.

“Nearly did on my way up,” he admitted, shooting a wry grin in Derek’s direction. Derek carefully ignored the rain caught in his eyelashes, the water-logged hoodie strings he’d been anxiously chewing on when Derek had joined him. “Slipped when I was climbing - I thought it was all over for a minute. What a way to end things that would’ve been, huh?”

“I would’ve caught you,” Derek said. He heard Stiles’s soft exhale but kept his eyes fixed on the treeline, thrown into sharp relief by a flash of lightning, then fading back into the shadowy stillness of their quiet neighborhood, its inhabitants already cozily tucked in for the night.

Stiles flinched deeper into his hoodie in response to the lightning, and Derek clenched his hand against the rough shingles to halt his impulse to reach for him. “I know,” Stiles said once the danger had passed, his sloped nose poking back out, raindrops still clinging to it despite the thinning drizzle.

Derek swallowed, dizzy with the desire to kiss that infuriating nose, to push the hoodie back and run warm fingers over Stiles’s scalp, to reassure himself that the heartbeat he’d been tracking all evening was as strong as it’d seemed.

“You locked the door,” Stiles added after a brief pause, his voice wounded.

“Yeah,” Derek said.

“I knocked,” Stiles said.

“Yeah.”

“And rang the doorbell.”

Derek didn’t respond.

“And called your phone. Which I heard ringing until you turned it off and turned on the radio.”

“Didn’t feel like arguing,” Derek said. _Talking_ , he’d meant to say, but the more honest word slipped out, and he didn’t try to take it back. Stiles drew in a sharp breath.

“I’m sorry,” he said after a beat. “I wasn’t trying to fight with you this time.”

“You always say that,” Derek said, his voice rough. He let the next words scrape over the fear in his throat. “And then you always leave.”

“Derek.” Stiles shifted in place, turning until he could face him directly, his eyes as bright and open in their honesty as they always were after he’d succeeded in shutting Derek out. “Derek, look at me.”

Derek resisted the tug of his voice, focusing his attention on the shingle he’d begun to pry loose. He’d regret it later, he knew, but he needed something to keep himself from giving in too easily. To keep the shards of his heart in one piece for a little longer, before they broke apart again. “Where’s your pillow?” he asked instead.

“In the Jeep.” He hesitated, and Derek could hear the click of his throat as he swallowed. “I thought about camping out in there until you let me in.”

“But you figured I’d forgive you faster if you put yourself in actual danger?”

“ _Forgive_ me?” Stiles repeated, his voice sharp with disbelief. “Derek - for fuck’s sake, you were as much of an asshole as I was.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, not even attempting to dispute the point. He _was_ an asshole. They both were; it was something that’d drawn them to each other, but constantly pushed them apart, like two magnets that couldn’t seem to stay flipped in the right direction. “I was. I said things I shouldn’t have, and I know that. I - fuck, Stiles, you know I’m sorry. But I don’t _leave_.”

“Fuck that,” Stiles retorted immediately. “You did leave. You kept fucking leaving, over and over. The last time, you didn’t come back to Beacon Hills for _five years_. Five years, Derek. And I didn’t even hear from you for three of them, not until Cora accepted my Facebook request and finally told me where the fuck the two of you were.”

Derek was startled into looking at him - really looking at him, at the dark shadows under his eyes, the hint of blue around his lips, the way he was bravely holding back shivers, his body periodically shuddering despite himself.

“Come inside,” he said, standing to his feet and offering his hand, which Stiles took without hesitation. “You’re freezing.”

They put the conversation on hold until Derek had found a way to safely bring Stiles into the house, which took more effort than either of them were anticipating. After a barked shin (Derek’s) and a substantial amount of complaining (Stiles’s) and swearing (both of them), he eventually maneuvered them into the bathroom, methodically stripping off Stiles’s soaking wet clothes and wrapping him in their largest, fluffiest towel. Frankly, Derek thought as he did his best to rub Stiles’s hair dry, Stiles halfheartedly trying to wiggle free, the only surprising part should have been the fact that it’d taken this long to use the towel for something along these lines.

“I’d thought about trying to crawl in the window,” Stiles revealed when Derek freed his mouth. “You always made it seem so easy. But just getting _on_ the roof was hard enough, and then I couldn’t find a way in. And _then_ I figured you probably would’ve just used your wolfy speed to lock all the windows as soon as you heard me trying.”

Derek hummed in response, dipping the towel gently into Stiles’s ears to dry them, the way he remembered his mother doing when they were kids. Like so many things in their lives, it’d taken a while for him and Laura to understand that they were different from their classmates, that maybe it wasn’t cool to get their haircuts at home, their mother washing their hair in the kitchen sink and gently running the clippers over the back of Derek’s neck. That kind of vulnerability - baring his throat to a non-packmate - still set him on edge, but when he was a kid, it’d seemed like a small sacrifice to appear more human. He couldn’t take away his speed or his strength or the way his eyebrows disappeared when he sneezed. He didn’t want to change any of that. But he did want to fit in. To have classmates who’d see beyond his athleticism and his powerful, ridiculously attractive family, who’d consider him a friend on his own merits. To find someone whose scent wouldn’t spike with confusion when his teeth grew a little longer in his excitement, scraping over their lips when they kissed. To belong, to someone other than his parents, his Alpha, his siblings.

After the fire, he and Laura had started cutting each others’ hair again. They were both awful at it, in the beginning; she accidentally gave him half a mohawk the first time, slicing his ear a little in the process, and while his ear healed, he’d given her an uneven trim that’d made a sob catch in her throat when she’d looked in the mirror. It wasn’t even meant as retaliation, he’d protested when she’d tackled him onto the motel room’s dirty bedspread. He just had no idea what he was doing.

 _I know_ , she’d said, burying her tear-streaked face in his throat, then flopping onto her own bed to stare at the stained ceiling. _I have no idea what I’m doing, either._

“I didn’t lock the windows,” he told Stiles, tucking the towel around his shoulders, using the opportunity to briefly trail his fingers across Stiles’s throat to check the pulse throbbing there. “And I wouldn’t have kept you from coming in, if you’d remembered to take your damn key. This is your house, too. I’m not that much of an asshole.”

Stiles wrestled an arm free of the towel and caught Derek’s hand before he could let it drop. His dark eyes held Derek in place, searching for something Derek wasn’t able to define. “You kind of are,” he said, his mouth twitching into a hint of a smile. “We both are. I don’t want to change that. I don’t want to change you. But I’m trying here, okay? I didn’t mean to stay away this long, Derek, I promise. Scott and Kira needed help with the kids anyway, and it was–” He let out a sigh, and his gaze skittered away. “It was an excuse, and I took it, because I needed some space to think.”

“Space away from me,” Derek said flatly. He tried to draw his hand away from Stiles, but he put no strength behind it, and Stiles’s tightened grip easily held him in place.

“It’s not always easy to think around you,” Stiles said, his eyes warm with the kind of affection that always made Derek ache with a strange sense of loss. “I had to sort through some shit in my own head, and then I went to talk to my dad, and he set me straight on some stuff.”

“Stuff,” Derek echoed. He grimaced, his mind racing along all the paths that conversation could’ve possibly taken, but he shook his head, firmly, to send the negative conclusions back to their dark corners. “Your dad likes me,” he reminded himself.

“My dad loves you,” he corrected. “But I didn’t need to talk to him about that. I needed to - dammit, Derek, this is a weird conversation to have when I’m naked in our bathroom. Hang on a second, will you? I’m going to put on some pants.”

Derek moved to the doorway, leaning against it and watching as Stiles pulled his discarded pajamas out of the sheets, wrinkling his nose at the wolf hairs caught in the fabric. He cast a narrow-eyed glance in Derek’s direction but kept his mouth shut, dropping the towel and tugging the pajama pants on, stray water droplets still trailing down his lean muscles as he bent again to shake his shirt free from its wolf-nest.

“I left Beacon Hills,” Derek said when Stiles’s messy hair popped through the neck of the shirt.

Stiles plucked a hair off the flannel sleeve and flicked it onto the floor. “What?”

“I left Beacon Hills. All those times before. I was never leaving you.”

Stiles sat down on the edge of the bed, quirking an eyebrow at him. “I know. But it didn’t feel like that. I was barely a blip on your radar back then, but when you left, it was like - I dunno, maybe a good half of my hope went with you. Everything was finally _okay_ again, and we were gonna be able to hang out normally, doing shit that didn’t involve trying to kill someone, or avoid being killed, every single week. We coulda started being friends. And I could’ve used more friends back then. I could’ve used _you_ , Derek.”

“I’d stopped being useful,” Derek said, pushing his shoulder harder into the doorframe instead of accepting the invitation Stiles had wordlessly sent him.

Stiles’s mouth dipped into a heavy frown. “Goddammit, Derek, stop twisting my words.”

“I’m not. I’m telling you my side. You were on my radar, Stiles. You were such a bright, distracting spot that I could barely see anything else. It put me in danger, and it put you in danger, and then when the danger had passed, it was just…it was just me it was going to hurt, after that, if I stayed. You and Scott didn’t need me anymore, and Cora did, so I went with her. And then when she–” He scraped a claw at a stray bit of paint on the frame, unable to meet Stiles’s gaze.

“She went back to her other pack,” Stiles filled in. “I’ve seen all the photos on Facebook. They’re a nice-looking group.”

“Yeah. And you know they invited me to stay, and I did for a while, but it never felt like home. So I came back.”

“To me,” Stiles said, his voice as soft as it ever got.

“To you,” Derek confirmed, feeling stupidly shy, even though they’d had variations of this conversation several times over the years. It felt like baring his heart, every time, and he had to force himself to release a little more of it in each exchange, knowing that Stiles needed to hear the truth as much as he needed to speak it. “I came back to you.”

“So did I,” Stiles said, rising to his feet and approaching Derek cautiously, as though there was ever a world in which Derek would have pushed him away. “I came back. I shouldn’t have left, but I’ll always come back.”

“Is it worth it?” Derek asked, voicing the fear that’d been creeping through his veins since Stiles had first slammed the door and sent gravel flying in the wake of his Jeep. “This keeps happening. I don’t know if I can keep doing it. Just fucking waiting around for you to decide you still care about me.” _Until you realize you don’t_ , he thought. _Until I’m not worth it to you anymore._

“I spent today with my dad,” Stiles said, propping himself in the opposite side of the doorway, so close Derek could feel their breath mingling. Stiles stretched his toes out to touch Derek’s sodden socks. Something in Derek settled at the touch, their physical link snapping back into place before it frayed beyond all hope of mending.

“And?”

“And he told me I was being an idiot. That I still have completely unrealistic expectations of what relationships are like. I’ve spent basically my entire life building up imaginary relationships for myself, then getting pissed off when reality doesn’t match what I created.”

“When it’s not as good,” Derek said, the words carving out a hole in his chest. For his part, he’d had the world’s shittiest relationships - everything that could possibly go wrong, in the most nightmarish ways imaginable. Stiles had been - Stiles had been different, from the beginning. Fierce and vibrant and _good_ , in a way Derek had given up believing he could ever have. He’d certainly stopped deserving it.

“No,” Stiles said sharply, pressing his foot over Derek’s until the wet sock squelched sadly and released more rainwater onto the already sodden bathroom floor. “When it’s _better_ , but my fucking limited view of things won’t always let me see that. Or my pride, let’s be real. And I knew that; I’ve always known that. But my dad talked to me about stuff we just - we never talk about.”

The bob of his Adam’s apple, the way he suddenly couldn’t hold Derek’s gaze, the words thickening as they went on - they were all the signs Derek had learned meant Stiles was talking, or even thinking, about his mother. He reached out, touching Stiles’s elbow with the tips of his fingers, and Stiles’s body shuddered in response. He wiped at his eyes and dropped his hand to link his damp fingers with Derek’s.

“I was a kid when she died. And the last year was so awful that I guess my brain kind of pushed all that into one category and told me that when she was upset or my parents were fighting, it was because she was losing her mind, and she was dying, and everything was falling apart. I remembered all the other years as this complete haze of happiness, y’know? Nothing was ever wrong. She was always smiling, and singing, and baking cookies, shit like that.”

“Yeah,” Derek said, squeezing Stiles’s hand. Cora’s experience was similar. When she was ripped out of the country and transplanted into a new pack, she was old enough to remember her family fondly, and young enough to discard all the less-than-perfect memories. It was why she’d responded to Derek with such disappointment when she’d finally found him. He wasn’t the superhuman older brother she’d remembered, or built up in her head. He was barely older than she was, and far more broken. He’d never earned a spot on her pedestal.

 _You’re a mess_ , she’d said, laughing wetly while stroking his hair out of his face, his eyes still flickering blue from the shock of transferring his Alpha powers to wash the poison out of her system. _But you’re my brother. And that’s more important, isn’t it?_

“The last thing I said to my mom,” Derek confessed, his throat barely letting the words out, “was that I hated being in our pack. That as soon as I turned eighteen, I was going to find a new one.” Kate had told him she’d help him, that she’d teach him how to use his senses to find other wolves. That now that he’d told her about the supernatural, she was fascinated, and wanted to meet as many as she possibly could. That there had to be more to the world than just the Hales.

“Fuck, Derek,” Stiles said in a rough exhale.

“Laura and I fought when she left me. I didn’t want to go back to Beacon Hills, but I couldn’t tell her why, and I couldn’t - I got angry, because I couldn’t explain. It’s my default, when I’m too scared to think clearly. I called her the day she died. It went to voicemail. I left her a message, telling her I was sorry, and that I’d come if she needed me. I don’t know if she ever heard it.”

Stiles’s fingers squeezed until Derek’s bones creaked under the pressure. “That’s why you always text me when I leave.”

Derek nodded, his throat too tight to say more.

“Goddammit, Derek. It’s been pissing me off because I thought you were trying to get in the last word, or be the bigger person or something. Ask Scott - I’ve always been fucking petty about that kind of thing.”

Derek shook his head and forced the rest out. “I didn’t want the last thing we said - I couldn’t live with that.”

“Goddammit,” Stiles said again, pulling Derek forward until he collapsed against him, his face pressed against Stiles’s throat, their hearts pounding in tandem. “You spent all that fucking time drying me off and making sure my weak human body didn’t get chilled or whatever the hell you think will happen, and you’ve been standing here in your wet clothes and your stupid socks. You asshole,” he muttered into Derek’s wet hair.

“I’m getting you wet again,” Derek apologized, and Stiles’s throat fluttered under his mouth. He pushed Derek’s head away, looking him fiercely in the eyes as he braced his hands on either side of Derek’s face.

“I love you, okay? Even when we fight. Especially when we fight. That’s what my dad told me, when I started spouting all that nonsense about how perfect he and my mom were. I didn’t remember them fighting, or I didn’t want to. But they did. _All the time_. They loved each other, and sometimes they hated each other, a little bit, but they never would’ve walked out on each other. When my mom - once she was gone, my dad was never the same. He’ll never be the same again. And I’m a Stilinski, okay? If I lose you, that’s it for me. You’re it for me, Derek, and I don’t ever want anyone else.”

“Okay,” he said, feeling wrung out, wanting Stiles to stop talking and let him hold him again.

Stiles laughed, probably able to read that in his face, as he so often could when Derek wasn’t able to find the right words.

“Okay,” he said, smiling at Derek with all his teeth. It was his honest smile, the one he reserved for Scott and his dad and Derek. The one most of the world never got to see. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you need to take off all your clothes right now and get into bed. I’m gonna warm you up.”

“Okay,” Derek said, trying to clumsily peel off his wet socks without letting go of Stiles, until Stiles gave in and kissed him, laughing against his mouth, his hands big and warm on Derek’s chest.

 _I won’t leave_ , he said in between kisses, his heart a steady thrum in Derek’s ears. _Not again. I promise_.

And this time, Derek believed him.

**Author's Note:**

> My fandom blog is [paintedrecs](http://paintedrecs.tumblr.com/), and my regular blog is [paintedlandscape](http://paintedlandscape.tumblr.com/). Come join me!


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